appreciation. Between addressing the envelopes Sonia kept glancing
at him. Once he caught her eye, and smiled at her. Germaine's back
was eloquent of her displeasure. The Duke stopped at a gap in the
line of pictures in which there hung a strip of old tapestry.

"I can never understand why you have left all these ancestors of
mine staring from the walls and have taken away the quite admirable
and interesting portrait of myself," he said carelessly.

Germaine turned sharply from the window; Sonia stopped in the middle
of addressing an envelope; and both the girls stared at him in
astonishment.

"There certainly was a portrait of me where that tapestry hangs.
What have you done with it?" said the Duke.

"You're making fun of us again," said Germaine.

"Surely your Grace knows what happened," said Sonia.

"We wrote all the details to you and sent you all the papers three
years ago. Didn't you get them?" said Germaine.

"Not a detail or a newspaper. Three years ago I was in the
neighbourhood of the South Pole, and lost at that," said the Duke.

"But it was most dramatic, my dear Jacques. All Paris was talking of
it," said Germaine. "Your portrait was stolen."

"Stolen? Who stole it?" said the Duke.